Ale Anecdotes
by FollowingWhiteRabbits
Summary: Merlin does not, actually, abandon her duties as a maidservant to go drink ale. But Arthur and the knights must never know that.
1. Chapter 1

Merlin lands on her hands and knees, retching. Through her blurred vision, she can just barely make out the red of blood as it spatters against the leaves beneath her.

Carefully, she does not think about what that means.

And then her stomach is done rebelling, and she's forcing herself up, forcing herself to take another step forward, forcing herself to _move_ despite the pain, because _damn it,_ Arthur thinks she's in the tavern right now.

Arthur thinks she's in the tavern, and if she isn't home by tomorrow, he'll assign her even more chores than he normally does when she disappears to the "tavern" for a day, and…

Agony rips through her stomach.

She gasps. Stumbles. Falls. Lands on her forearms.

She vomits, and this time, it's not a spattering of blood so much as it is a river.

Merlin closes her eyes.

There's no way she's going to make it back.

She had known this. Ever since she realized that the knife had been poisoned, she had known this. Yes, she had killed Morgana's assassin, but the assassin had also killed her. Was killing her. Is killing her.

The acknowledgement of this fact saps the remains of her strength, and Merlin finds herself without the ability to push herself up again.

Instead, she rolls over, onto her back, and stares up at the sky. It is the last comfort she can give herself; like this, there are no rocks pressing into the wound on her stomach.

She lies there for a time.

And slowly, gradually, everything fades.

* * *

 _Merlin knows that one day, she is going to disappear. One day, she is going to be there, and then the next, she will not._

 _She imagines it will happen like this._

 _Iseldir, or Alator, or her own sources, will inform her of a threat facing Camelot. She will disappear in the night, as she so often does, to take care of it._

 _She will be wounded, as she so often is, while dealing with the threat. But this time, the wound will be a mortal one, and she will die._

 _Arthur will wake up the next day, and Gaius will tell Arthur that she is in the tavern._

 _Gaius will not know that she is dead._

 _Arthur will not know that she is dead._

 _Arthur will get irritated, and will give Gaius a list of chores for her to complete once she "stumbles back in."_

 _The day will pass, and she will not appear._

 _The next day will pass, and she will not appear._

 _Eventually, Gaius will know that something is gravely wrong, but he will not tell Arthur, because admitting that she is in trouble means admitting that he has lied, and Merlin has ordered Gaius to not say anything that will incriminate himself._

 _The days will continue to pass, and she will continue to not appear._

 _(She will continue to rot in the woods, or in a cave, or in a field, or in Morgana's dungeons, or wherever she managed to drag herself to before dying.)_

 _Eventually, Arthur and the knights will realize that something is wrong, but they will never know what._

 _They will grieve, and they will rage, and Arthur will demand answers._

 _Those answers will never come._

 _Yes, Merlin knows this._

 _One day she will disappear. It is inevitable. (It is better than the alternative, which is burning.)_

 _Today is not that day._

* * *

A distant voice calls her true name.

"Emrys! Oh gods. Emrys!"

There is panic in that voice, and fear. She is blind, and almost gone, yet her magic awakens, struggling to reach out to help whoever it is. But the poison in her body chains the magic down, and she moans in pain.

"It's okay. You're safe now. Gods, what happened?"

Then there is a hand on her forehead, and she can feel the poison burning away, and she knows no more.

* * *

Mordred gets her back to Camelot safely. In the morning, when she wakes, he yells at her for risking her life, and then he cries.

She feels bad about that, but can't say anything comforting to her friend. She will always be willing to risk her life to keep Camelot and Arthur safe.

* * *

She was only missing for one day, but Arthur gives her as many chores as if she had been in the tavern for a whole week. It hurts to move, and completing all of her duties leaves her wanting to collapse, but she doesn't mind.

The pain means she's lucky. It means she's alive.

(Carefully, she does not think about how her luck is running out.)


	2. Chapter 2

**A/N: Well. It's 8/30/2018, and I'm alive! Surprise!**

 **Also: This is a little self-indulgent. I've included a much more proactive, BAMF Merlin, which I wish we had seen more of in the show.**

* * *

Merlin feels Mordred's presence in her head fade as the distance between them suddenly increases, and she knows that he's beaten her to Everwick City on the border between Gwynedd and Camelot. She lets out a string of curses, because _damn it_ , she's _taking too long_ , but she can't just leave her scrying mirror on her bed where anyone could come in and find it.

Finally, she manages to pry up the loose floorboard. She tosses the mirror into the exposed hollow, grabs the blue cloak that's tucked away by the sidhe staff, grabs the anti-burn charm, and reaches for the floorboard again to place it back where it belongs. Before her fingers reach the board, her magic reacts to her urgency. The board snaps out of sight, then reappears at its proper place in the floor.

She doesn't take the time to wonder why her magic thought it was easier to teleport the board instead of just moving it over a few inches, and she doesn't take the time to be shocked that she can instinctually teleport objects she isn't even touching. She forces herself to ignore the unsettling display of raw power, stands, shrugs on the cloak, pulls down the hood, calls up her magic again, and takes a step forward.

Her foot leaves the wood floor in her bedroom in Camelot and lands on a stone street in Everwick City. Immediately, she is assaulted by the heat. It crashes over her like a physical wave, oppressive and overwhelming, and the air scorches her throat as it travels to her lungs.

She coughs, choking on the ashy air, and looks up. Buildings on both sides of her are burning. The entire street, as far as she can see, is burning.

She holds back more expletives. The fire is magical in origin. The flames shine just a little too brightly against the night sky, put off just a little too much heat, and she isn't sure that anyone else would notice - she isn't sure she would have noticed - but her magic surges up inside of her at the sight, and that tells her all she needs to know.

She looks at the street for a moment, then prepares herself to teleport closer to the edge of the city. There's nothing effective she can do here to fight the fire, but she can do plenty where the flames haven't reached yet.

That's when she hears a scream.

Instantly, Merlin stretches her senses out, searching for nearby life. She expects to find one person, and instead finds five, all in different buildings.

She's horrified, but she knows she should have expected that. Magical fires like this tend to spread very fast. It's not surprising that not everyone could escape.

She takes off running towards the closest person. She would teleport, but blindly appearing in the middle of a burning building is too dangerous. She might accidentally land where the floor has become weak, or in the middle of the flames, or underneath a collapsed roof.

As she runs, she contacts her allies.

 _"Mordred,"_ she thinks, mentally projecting the words. _"Can you set up a perimeter? We need to make sure the fire doesn't spread further."_

 _"Not sure I'll be able to do that,"_ he replies. _"I'm trying to get a family out of the flames, and I can feel other people nearby."_

 _"I've already tried that, anyway,"_ Amara, Merlin's current contact in Everwick, adds. _"The flames eat through my barriers like they're wood."_

Well then. That's not good.

Merlin begins to feel the edges of panic claw at her, but she pushes it down… but that's really not good.

* * *

Up until Merlin gets in bed, the day is one of those blessed days where nothing bad happens. Merlin is able to complete her duties as Arthur's maidservant, which involve cleaning his room, washing his clothes, sharpening his weapons, and polishing his armor, among other things. She's also able to complete the tasks that Arthur gives her for backtalk, such as mucking out the stables, sharpening the weapons of his closest knights, and running around the castle on useless errands.

She makes a show of not wanting to do the latter chores, but she doesn't mean any of her protests. She actually prefers those days where she's assigned them. When she's tasked with running around the castle, she's able to cast fortifying spells on larger areas of her home. And when she's in charge of polishing the knights' armor and sharpening their swords, she's able to discreetly work various strengthening and protective spells into the metal. Of course, the spells technically only need to be cast once to work, but casting them multiple times a week over the course of months and years makes the spells infinitely stronger. At this point, she's confident that very few attacks, magical or physical, could ever damage a Camelot shield or dull a Camelot sword.

And as for mucking out the stables? Well, Merlin is happy to know that the war horses are just a tad more intelligent, a tad braver, and a tad more likely to be able to spot and avoid threats.

So yeah. It's a good day. Merlin is able to cast all the protective spells her heart desires, and that's just part of it. Once Arthur dismisses her for the evening, she goes straight to the abandoned storage room that she and Mordred meet up at, where she promptly creates an illusion of Aithusa on her first try. She lets out a shout of triumph, immediately looses her concentration, and the likeness vanishes, but she's still smiling, because she has been trying to cast that for the past three days.

Mordred and her spend the rest of two hours reviewing old spells he's taught her (because as powerful as she is, she doesn't know nearly as many spells as, say, a druid). She leaves the clandestine meeting with a feeling of accomplishment and the knowledge that she's grinning ridiculously.

She often leaves like that. It's… freeing, to not have to hide around someone else.

Finally, Merlin wraps up her day by pulling out her scrying mirror and consulting three-way with Alator and Iseldir. Neither have anything alarming to report, which is unusual, but also very welcome.

She goes to bed.

The one thing she doesn't do is check in with the Burn Brigade members. They Burn Brigade was originally a group of five volunteers (although it's since grown to seventeen) who helped her smuggle innocent individuals, most condemned for magic, out of Uther's dungeons. However, ever since Arthur's been in power, the Burn Brigade hasn't had to do much - in fact, any - smuggling.

(She's knows she's proud of this fact. Arthur is a hundred times the King his father was, and he's just at the beginning of his reign.)

Instead of sneaking anti-burn and anti-smoke charms into the dungeon, performing perfectly-timed teleportation spells, and conjuring the visual and auditory illusion of a person screaming at the stake, they've scattered to the villages and cities of Camelot, keeping an ear to the ground for threats.

Since she doesn't exactly have time to listen to seventeen different reports every day, she lets the Burn Brigade members contact her in case they hear something.

So yeah. She doesn't reach out to anyone in the Burn Brigade before she goes to sleep.

Two hours later - two hours after midnight - Merlin is awoken by a light burning sensation around her neck. Her necklace, the one that gets hot when someone is trying to contact her through her scrying mirror, is active.

She pulls out the mirror, and Amara, the Burner in charge of the Everwick area, says that Everwick City is on fire.

Merlin wakes up Mordred telepathically, contacts Iseldir and Alator and all of the other Burners, and that's the end of her good day.

* * *

Merlin only manages to rescue four of the five. She's just returned to the street after teleporting the fourth person away, and when she arrives, she can't feel the fifth person's mind.

She feels like she's been kicked in the chest when she realizes what happened, and she wants to pause. She wants to recover from loosing someone like this, when she's a minute away from helping them, but there's no time.

She lost one person on this street, and there are dozens and dozens of other streets where people have just one minute left, or just ten seconds left, and… it's overwhelming.

Half of the Burners are working on healing those who escaped or were already rescued. It's difficult, because they're obviously doing magic, and no one wants to trust the wounded to a magic-user, so they've taken to kind of… kidnapping the victims who are closest to death through quick, precise portal-work mixed with scrying. They're taking the wounded to a clearing about half a league away and working on saving their lives there.

The other half of the Burners are rescuing people from the flames. Some of Iseldir's druids are also pulling people from the fire.

Alator and the rest of the Catha's congregation are working on putting up barriers. So far, they've had no luck. The magic in the flames is just too strong…

…Now that's an idea.

Instead of going to another street to get people out, Merlin closes her eyes and kneels. She doesn't use an incantation - she has a gut instinct that it wouldn't work as well - and reaches deep inside herself.

 _I need a storm,_ she thinks. _I need rain to weaken the flames._

It doesn't work.

 _I need a storm. I need rain,_ she repeats.

It doesn't work.

She expands her consciousness, feels not just the empty street, but the entire city. She feels every desperate soul, every person screaming for help, every unconscious mind that's been knocked out by a lack of air.

 _I need a storm. I need rain,_ she repeats.

She expands her consciousness even further, out to the people outside the city. She feels their fear, feels their grief, feels their horror.

And in that moment, all of those emotions becomes her own. It's not just sympathy, it's not even empathy. She feels it as sharply as if she is the one watching her loved ones die, and as if she is the one dying. Their desperation becomes hers.

 _I need a storm. I need rain. I need raindrops._

In her head, she sees it. She sees water appearing, so high in the sky, not pulled from the air, but _created_ , created by _her_ , created by her grief and pain and fear.

It starts to rain.

It starts to rain, and the flames that are supposed to be unaffected by water begin to subside.

She gives a mixture between a sob and a laugh when she realizes that the flames aren't just weakening, they're being put out completely.

Later, her allies will all look at her with the awe that she fears and hates. Later, Mordred will pull her aside, and tell her that not even the high priestesses could create an entire storm from nothing, that they pulled the water from the air and strengthened the wind that was already blowing. He asks her, though, if she created the water, if she created each individual raindrop and imbued it with her magic, because the rain sang of magic, and only magic could have doused those flames.

Later, she will want to say no, but she won't be able to, because she'll remember creating the storm, and she'll remember seeing each raindrop as it came into being as clearly as if she had just done it.

She says yes, and in doing so, terrifies herself.

But that comes later.

Right now, Merlin feels the rain pound down against her cloak. She tries to stand, because the rain might be putting out the fire, but there are still people in danger, and there are those who need healed.

But as soon as she's on her feet, black spots appear in her vision, and she has to sit down.

She hates every second of it, but she ends up having to stay in that spot until hours later, when Iseldir is finally free enough to come and find her.

* * *

At the end of the night, the death count is high. Nothing about the situation feels lucky, and yet Merlin knows that they are. They had known that Morgana had been gathering followers in the North-Western villages near Gwynedd, and they had known that she had been focusing on Everwick City.

This knowledge was why Amara was able to tell Merlin about the fire in time - Amara had been spending the week in the city.

In the light of the morning, Merlin leans against Mordred, looks at the remains of the center of the city, and knows that if it weren't for Amara being stationed here, there wouldn't be anything left at all.

It's a small comfort.

"Ready to go home?" she asks her companion, feeling empty inside.

Mordred's lips quirk into a small smile, but she knows there's no happiness in it. "Let's go," he says.

A second later, he teleports them away.

* * *

Merlin slides Arthur's breakfast onto his table.

He eyes her suspiciously. "You look tired. And you've barely said anything."

She wants to say something snarky in response, but for once, her brain isn't cooperating. All she can think of is the awe in the eyes of the Burners, of the way Alator moved to kneel until he saw the panic in her eyes, of the way Mordred asked her if she had created the storm.

Of the way it felt to be a hundred people dying and grieving all at once.

Arthur sniffs suspiciously, pulling her out of her thoughts. "Why do you smell like smoke?" he asks.

"I smell like smoke?" she says blankly. But of course she does. She didn't have the chance to make and take a bath before it was time to get Arthur up.

"Yes. You do."

"…Oh."

Arthur looks her over, and says, "You spent the night in the tavern, didn't you."

Her eyes widen. "I did not!" But of course he would assume that. It hurts, a little bit, that that's what he thinks, when in reality she's been dealing with… well. A lot of things.

"Merlin," he says, staring at her flatly. "You smell like you spent the night in a smoky room, and I have never seen anyone look more hungover - well, maybe Gwaine, but that's not important."

She feels hungover. She's got a blistering headache, and she feels like everything's too bright, and she wants to go to bed and never get up again. But she's not hungover. She's exhausted, and she's probably traumatized.

But Arthur can never know that.

So she gives a 'you-caught-me' grin, along with a shoulder-shrug.

He gives her extra chores.

* * *

That evening, while she's scrubbing the floors of the throne room, a messenger stumbles in, bearing news about a terrible fire in Everwick City. Apparently, three quarters of the place was destroyed.

The messenger hesitates at the end of his report. "Sire," he begins, then trails off.

Arthur, who looks ashen, gestures for him to continue.

"Sire, there were reports of sorcerers."

Arthur's eyes sharpen. "The fire was caused by sorcerers?"

"No. The sorcerers… well, they were helping. Apparently…" He trails off again. Evidently, blatantly stating that any magic user is helpful in front of Camelot's King is too scary for him. Merlin wouldn't blame him, but Arthur is not Uther. The messenger is not going to be executed for treason for delivering a message, even if it is this one.

Arthur is apparently going through a similar thought process, because his voice softens, and he says, "You may continue. You're not in any trouble."

The messenger still looks wary, but he finishes his report. "The sorcerers were wearing cloaks, Sire, so no one was able to see any of their faces. But some of them were pulling people out of the fire, and others… well, we refused their medical aid, and then… well, we thought they were kidnapping people, but we couldn't figure out why, because the kidnapped were all gravely wounded. But then the kidnapped returned in the morning, and they were mostly healed. And then we thought they had been enchanted, but no one was acting abnormally. And they all said the same thing. The sorcerers… healed them, Sire. And did nothing else to them. Just took them to a clearing, and healed."

Arthur looks thoughtful. "If these sorcerers were so helpful, why didn't they just put out the fire?"

The messenger gets a far-away look in his eyes. "The fire ended because of a storm, Sire. And if it was a natural one, I'll eat my hat. There was no warning before it hit, not even clouds covering the stars. Once moment, it was clear, and the next it was raining. And the rain itself felt… odd. It was… refreshing. Healing. It made all the bad things seem more distant, and it cleared my head."

The messenger gives a peaceful smile at the memory, then realizes what he just said, and who he said it in front of, and snaps back to attention. "Not that I'm suggesting that the sorcerers were good sorcerers. Of course they weren't; they're sorcerers. It's just… they seemed very eager to end the fire, is all. I'm not sure why."

Merlin isn't hurt by the messenger's words about the 'goodness' of the sorcerers. She's heard worse fairly frequently over the years, after all.

But his words about how the rain made him feel disturb her.

"How many sorcerers were there?" Arthur asks.

"It's hard to say, Sire. Some of them were wearing purple cloaks, some of them were wearing blue cloaks, and a few others had the green cloaks of the druids. As to how many were wearing each color, I couldn't tell you. It was so chaotic, and they kept teleporting..."

She tries not to think about it - any of it, not the storm, not the deaths, not the three-quarters-destroyed - as Arthur puts away the mystery of the helpful sorcerers for another day and begins to issue orders concerning the relief effort.

She continues to scrub.


End file.
